


every hope i've ever had

by jemmasimmmons



Series: every hope [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post S4 Finale, framework mentions, hopeful happy ending, just.....a lot of talking, space speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 04:24:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11570265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: Jemma notices the way he is hovering in the doorway with one hand resting on the door handle, his fingers itching across the mottled paint there. He hesitates, and she swings her legs back onto the bed without taking her eyes from him, waiting.‘Is it okay,’ he asks eventually, his gaze flicking up anxiously to meet hers, ‘if I stay?’Fitz and Jemma have a conversation in outer space. Set post season four finale.





	every hope i've ever had

**Author's Note:**

> it's taken me quite a while to write this, and almost even longer to get it posted! i'm rather nervous about it, probably because it's existed only in my head for so long, but i hope you can appreciate it. the title comes from rupi kaur's poem.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @jeemmasimmons, and twitter @jemmasimmmons, if you want to chat!

 

 

“what am i to you he asks

i put my hands in his lap

and whisper you

are every hope

i've ever had

in human form” (Rupi Kaur)

 

The sound of an alarm, blaring loudly and repeatedly above her head, wakes Jemma with a start. For a moment, lying wrapped up in her sheets, she is confused and strains to hear over the alarm’s rhythm over the equally loud thudding of her heart.

Life on the space station is governed by sound – in the absence of natural light and clocks, bells and alarms are used to keep track of time. They announce when it is time to wake up, when to eat and when to sleep, and over the last couple of weeks Jemma has gotten very good at distinguishing between the sound of the different alarms and what they mean. This one, though, is utterly unfamiliar to her, and listening the sound of it sends a sudden rush of fear flooding through her veins as she imagines what it might signify.

More than anyone, she knows how easily things can go wrong in space.

Struggling out of her sheets, Jemma sets her feet on the floor. As fast as she can whilst still shaking the dregs of sleep from her mind, she slips on her shoes before turning to grapple for the light switch. She flicks it on just as her bunk door opens, and suddenly Fitz is caught in the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights. His face screws up in protest, and he brings up a hand to shelter his eyes from the light.

‘ _Fitz_.’ Jemma breathes out his name, the sight of him knocking a little of her fear out of her. ‘What is it? What’s the alarm for?’

He shakes his head. ‘One of the night guards entered his passcode wrong whilst trying to access the control room,’ he explains, having to shout a little to make himself heard over the blaring. ‘I expect it’ll stop in a minute.’

As soon as the last word has left his mouth, the piercing alarm ceases and Jemma exhales with relief. She sinks back onto her bed and kicks her shoes off again.

‘It does seem rather excessive,’ she grumbles, ‘to have such a loud alarm for such a seemingly insignificant occurrence.’

‘Yeah, well.’ In the doorway, Fitz’s smile is humourless. ‘You know how uptight they are about security around here.’

Jemma meets his eyes, and swallows hard.

They are not prisoners on the space station, or at least no one has told them that they are. Admittedly, their sudden abduction from the breakfast diner had left them with the distinct impression of being arrested, but since then they haven’t been treated like prisoners. They are allowed to speak to each other, go wherever their primary level of clearance allows and do the work that they choose to in the various control rooms and laboratories.

But they aren’t allowed to leave, and for Jemma that makes the station just as much of a prison as any cell with bars on its windows.

She has had enough of being trapped in places with no way out.

‘Thank you,’ she says quietly, ‘for coming to tell me.’

Fitz shrugs. ‘I met Daisy in the corridor, and she was coming back from the control room. I figured you’d be wondering what it was, so…’

He trails off, but Jemma nods, feeling a surge of emotion as she understands his meaning. He’d wanted to sooth her confusion before it had erupted into a full blown fear. In a moment of panic, his first thought had still been of her.

The idea of that makes a lump rise at the back of her throat.

‘Thank you,’ she repeats in a whisper, not trusting herself to speak any louder.

Fitz shrugs again, and Jemma notices the way he is hovering in the doorway with one hand resting on the door handle, his fingers itching across the mottled paint there. He hesitates, and she swings her legs back onto the bed without taking her eyes from him, waiting.

‘Is it okay,’ he asks eventually, his gaze flicking up anxiously to meet hers, ‘if I stay?’

Jemma almost laughs aloud as she nods, quickly blinking back her tears.

‘Yes,’ she says, softly. ‘Yes, of course it is.’

She shuffles across the mattress to be closer to the wall, smoothing out the sheets next to her for him to sit on. But either Fitz doesn’t see or deliberately chooses not to; he sits at her feet with his back against the wall, bringing his knees up to his chest.

Jemma twists the sheet around her fingers, but after a moment she swallows down the bitterness of her disappointment and chooses to focus instead on the fact that he is even here in the first place.

After everything that has happened over the last few months, seeing Fitz, the _real_ Fitz, sitting near her with his head turned in profile towards the light, isn’t something she is likely to take for granted ever again.

Sighing, she switches off the light, bringing the more comfortable darkness back into the room, and leans her head against the wall to watch him.

They haven’t really talked since leaving the Framework. Or rather, they haven’t talked about anything that _matters_. The monotony of their days, the work they do, the disgusting rehydrated food in the cafeteria – they have talked about all of those things, in snatched moments at their work benches or in the corridor outside the communal showers. It is these moments that leave Jemma aching for the days they had lain in bed for hours, palms pressed together, talking until the sun came up.

The closest she had come to talking to him about everything that had happened had been on the Zephyr on the way to the diner, now almost two weeks ago. But she had still been reeling herself, exhausted emotionally and physically, with the injury to her leg aching, and all she had been able to do was hold his hand and remind him that he wasn’t alone.

She had wanted to go further, reassure him again that what had happened hadn’t been his fault, or even tell him what she had seen on the security feed at the Playground. But she had held back, afraid that his wounds were still too fresh and all she would do would be to cause him to bleed again.

Even now, Jemma is apprehensive to bring anything related to the Framework up for fear of causing him more pain, but the weight of the conversations they still haven’t had are hanging too heavily in the space between them for her to ignore them any longer.

Licking her lips, she looks up.

‘How are you finding this?’ When Fitz frowns at her through the half-dark, Jemma tips her head from one side to the other and gestures to the room around them. ‘All of this. Truthfully.’

‘Truthfully?’ Scrunching up his nose, he seems to consider the question before admitting, ‘at the moment, there’s not a lot that I wouldn’t give for a decent cup of tea.’

Jemma closes her eyes as she smiles; she’d said almost the exact same thing to Daisy the day before. ‘Urgh. I don’t see how anyone could consider that horrid powdered stuff _milk_. It tastes more like _plaster dust_ than anything else.’

Fitz snorts. ‘I know. But other than the food…I guess it’s okay. I like being able to see the stars out of my window when I go to sleep at night. It’s like my picture back home, only bigger, and real. I know it’s not quite the same but it’s something familiar. I guess I find that comforting.’

He glances up, to her own window where the heavy metal shutter is pulled down, firmly locking out any sight of the stars and galaxies around them.

‘You…you keep yours down?’

Following his gaze, Jemma hesitates.

On their first night on the station, she had been so tired she had fallen asleep with the shutter open. She had woken from fractured sleep penetrated by bad dreams to the sight of the universe in front of her, and it had instantly transported her from one nightmare back into another.

For one horrifying moment, there had been sand underneath her fingernails, wind in her hair and a cold fear in her lungs, making it hard to breathe and even harder to think straight. She had tumbled out of the sheets to the floor and staggered across the room to bring the shutter down like a clamp, tightening it as far as it would go. It had taken her the rest of the night to fight off the panic, pacing across her bunk and shivering all alone, until the morning alarm came and the lights came on.

Since then, the floor to ceiling window of her bunk was something like a catch twenty two. Keeping it open took her back to those terrifying nights she had spent on her own on an alien planet, dehydrated, half-delirious and afraid, but having it shut only made her more aware of the nightmare she was trying to keep out.

Momentarily, Jemma considers telling him a lie – that she could only sleep in complete darkness, or that the lights of the stars disturbed her. But Fitz had been sleeping beside her for almost a year now and he would know she was lying. And besides, when she was so anxious for him to feel he could be honest with her, wouldn’t it be hypocritical for her not be completely honest with him?

‘I do,’ she says, carefully. ‘I suppose I don’t find the sight of the stars outside quite as comforting as you do.’

She pauses, watching his face as the realisation sinks in.

‘Oh, God.’ Fitz groans, and buries his face in his hands. ‘Oh, Jemma, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even _think_ -‘

‘Neither did I,’ Jemma says quickly, anxious not to add any more guilt to his already heavy shoulders. ‘Until I went to bed our first night, I hadn’t even thought about it myself. I wouldn’t have expected you to.’

‘But _I_ would have expected me to!’ Fitz says, lifting his head to her. His eyes are tired, and she can see how frustrated he is with himself. ‘And I _should_ have. I can’t even imagine what this must be like for you.’

Swallowing hard, Jemma shuffles forwards on the mattress so she is closer to him.

‘It’s not so bad,’ she says. ‘And honestly, being on this station is a massive improvement to my last trip to space, as I’m sure you’ll remember. There’s a bed, lighting, heat, enough food and water…’

Noticing that Fitz has turned his head from her again, she reaches out to touch his hand, held in a fist on his knee. He looks back at her, almost surprised at the contact, and Jemma manages a smile.

‘And you,’ she continues, softly. ‘I’m not alone here, and that in itself makes me feel a thousand times safer.’

Through the darkness, she sees Fitz give her a ghost of a smile, and his fist unfurls. His fingers twine with hers as he squeezes her hand. After a moment, he speaks again.

‘I am sorry, though,’ he says, his thumb brushing absently over the back of her hand. ‘I’m sorry that you’ve been brought to a place that brings back those bad memories. And I’m sorry that I didn’t think to ask you about it sooner.’

Jemma shakes her head. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, and hesitates for a moment before adding, ‘I know you must have had a lot on your mind recently.’

She watches his face tighten, and he gives her a miniscule nod.

‘You know you can talk to me about it, Fitz. You can talk to me about _anything_.’

Remembering something he had told her in the wreckage of the base, Jemma bites her lip.

‘Are you…still hearing their voices?’

‘Screams,’ Fitz corrects her, so bluntly it makes her wince. ‘I can still hear their screams, just like I can still feel a gun in my hand.’

By his side, Jemma can see his hand tremble, so hard it is practically vibrating with the memory.

‘And I can still feel the hate,’ Fitz continues, slowly letting her fingers slip from his own to wrap his arms around his stomach protectively. His legs slide down from his chest to dangle uselessly over the edge of the bed. ‘I can still feel all the hate that I had in there, and it makes me feel sick.’

‘Because it doesn’t belong to you!’ Jemma blurts out. ‘You don’t hate inhumans, you don’t hate SHIELD…you don’t hate _me_.’

Fitz exhales with a shiver, and she reaches out to take his hand again.

‘That hate was forced upon you by a few scraps of code. However real it feels, it’s not yours. It’s a fabrication, just like your memories of the…the _testing_ that you did. It didn’t really happen, and you shouldn’t have to feel guilty for it.’

‘Mace and Agnes weren’t fabrications, though,’ Fitz reminds her, his voice hoarse. She can see how his eyes are shining with tears through the dark and his hand is limp in her own. ‘They were real people, Jemma, and _I_ was responsible for their deaths.’

‘But Agnes was already dead, Fitz,’ she whispers.

His head whips around to her, and the startled look on his face tells Jemma that this is the first he has heard of this. It makes her heart ache to think that he has been carrying around this unnecessary pain for so much longer than he had needed too.

She nods, answering the question he doesn’t have the words to voice.

‘It was only her consciousness left alive inside the Framework, the same as Radcliffe in the end. There wouldn’t have been anything we could do to bring them back out again, once their bodies were dead. Even if you hadn’t…’

Here, Jemma breaks off, watching Fitz shut his eyes tightly and feeling her own stomach turn at the memory.

‘Even if what happened hadn’t happened,’ she amends carefully, ‘she would still have died when we dismantled the Framework itself. We couldn’t have saved her, Fitz, however hard we might have tried. And as for Mace-‘

Hearing her own voice crack as she says his name, Jemma stops and sucks in a breath to keep her emotions under control.

The director’s death is something that she herself feels a degree of guilt for – for not explaining herself better, for not securing his trust, for not figuring out a solution to get them all out of the building before it collapsed. She can feel the heaviness of it pressing on her chest like a lead weight, the feeling all too familiar.

If she is feeling this much guilt, she can only imagine how heavily it must be weighing on Fitz’s mind.

‘I tried, Fitz,’ she says, heaviness creeping into her words. ‘I tried to convince him that world wasn’t real, and I tried to get him out in time, I really did.’

Jemma sees Fitz nod, a single tear rolling down his cheek, and she sighs deeply.

‘But Mace made a choice,’ she continues, ‘a choice that I have no doubt he would have made in any world, real or not, consciously or not. And we owe it to his memory – to his _legacy_ – to respect that choice.’

Fitz nods again and sniffs, dragging the hand that isn’t held in hers across his face.

‘I do respect him for it, in a way I should have done when he was alive,’ he admits. ‘But Jemma, I ordered those air strikes. I pressed the button, I sent the bombs…I _designed_ the bombs. _I_ was the one who condoned the building of those education centres, _I_ allowed those children to be trapped there in the first place. If it hadn’t been for me-‘

Unable to listen to him anymore, Jemma pushes back the sheets.

Crawling across the bed, she straddles his knees so she is kneeling above him and brings her hands up to his cheeks. Fitz had stopped speaking the moment she had moved but now he seems to be frozen, staring up at her with his hands hovering in mid-air.

From her vantage point, Jemma is able to study his face in a way that she hasn’t done since before the Framework. Even in the dark, she can see the deep purple grooves under his eyes that betray how poorly he has been sleeping. Above his dark circles, his eyes are still wet with tears but behind the heavy shroud of guilt, Jemma can still see his all-consuming, tender love for her shining through. The sight of it is so familiar, so missed, that it almost makes her weep.

Gently, she brushes her fingertips underneath his eyes, as if she could wipe away the rings of exhaustion and pain lingering there just by her touch, and strokes her thumbs against his cheeks. He is stubbly, and her fingers encounter only roughness, but the memory of what is softer underneath makes Jemma smile in spite of everything.

She has been so careful these last few weeks, desperate to be close to him but understanding that he might be craving distance as much as she was craving intimacy. Apart from their hug in the pod, which had felt more like she was holding him together than comforting him, Jemma has allowed herself to do nothing more than hold Fitz’s hand. He has never refused her that, but he hasn’t instigated anything more, and Jemma half-expects him to shove her away or shrink under her touch.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, as she continues to stroke his cheeks, Fitz lets his hands rest on her waist. His touch is light, as if he is still afraid to put his hands on her, but it’s there.

Taking a deep breath, Jemma looks him in the eye.

‘Listen to me,’ she says, quietly but firmly. ‘I know that everything that happened inside the Framework felt real to you. It felt like another life, one that you lived and one that you were in control of. But you weren’t. Everything that you did, everything that happened to you…those things only happened because _it_ wanted them to.’

Underneath her hands, Fitz shudders, and it takes everything inside of Jemma not to pull him even closer to absorb the tremors.

‘You didn’t have any free will in that world, however much it might have felt like it at the time. You were being moved around like a chess piece to help it win whatever sick game it was trying to play, and by adding a few extra lines of code it could make you do whatever it wanted.’

Remember this, and everything that AIDA had forced onto him, makes Jemma’s skin crawl. Biting down her own anger, she lets her hands slip to his shoulders.

‘You had no agency in there,’ she whispers. ‘Nothing that you think you chose to do was your choice at all. You were being manipulated, and it was wrong, Fitz, it was _so_ wrong, and I am so sorry.’

Her breathing catches and Fitz notices. He shakes his head, slumping back against the wall. ‘You don’t…’

When he doesn’t finish the sentence and closes his eyes dejectedly, Jemma exhales and leans forward to rest her forehead on his.

‘I am so sorry,’ she repeats, ‘for everything that you went through and for everything that you are feeling right now. And I know it might take a lot more than me just saying this for you to start believing it, but, Fitz, you have to listen to me.’

His head turns slightly, and he opens his eyes again. Jemma lifts one hand from his shoulder to brush her fingers through his hair. It might just be her imagination, but she thinks she feels him lean into her a little.

‘You are not responsible for the actions it forced you to take.’

Fitz breathes out, with what sounds like a sob. He takes one hand from her waist and lifts it up to take her own hand, linking their fingers together and pressing them to his cheek. For one fleeting moment, Jemma thinks that he is going to kiss them, and she feels her heart leap inside her chest.

‘You’re right,’ Fitz says eventually, still holding their hands to his face. ‘You’re right, and I know that you’re right…’ He sighs, and looks up at her. ‘But if I know that you’re right, why do I still feel so guilty about it?’

Jemma’s legs are beginning to cramp underneath her, and at his last word they suddenly wobble. Twisting herself to the side so she doesn’t fall on him, she lowers herself back onto the mattress, shuffling back so that she is sitting by his side.

It is only once she is there that Jemma realises Fitz’s hands have helped guide her down.

Slowly, she tucks her legs up so that her knees are resting in his lap and takes hold of his hand as it slides away from his waist. Turning her head, she catches his gaze and holds it steadily.

‘You feel guilty,’ she says gently, ‘because you are so much better than the man that world forced you to be.’

For a moment, Fitz continues to stare at her and Jemma holds her breath, daring to hope that she might have convinced him. After a while though, he sighs and turns his head away to face the window and she feels her heart sink again.

‘What about everything I did outside of the Framework?’

Jemma frowns.

‘What things, Fitz? What do you mean?’

‘For starters, creating the bloody thing.’ There is so much bitterness in his tone that she almost flinches, the words stinging her. ‘The Framework was my idea and it was my technology that was used to create so much pain. And then it was me who helped Radcliffe with the LMD technology, me who didn’t tell SHIELD about it in time. Those were my decisions, my choices. You can’t look at those, Jemma, and tell me that I’m not at least partially responsible for the Framework and for AIDA existing in the first place.’

Hesitating, Jemma thinks back to when he had first presented her with his blueprints for the framework technology, and how excited he had been to build it and show her how it worked. She remembers wandering across a virtual lab, walking three feet in the air, and her own voice dreaming aloud of what it could be used for. _A meadow. A cottage. A place to get away_.

She had been delighted for him, fascinated by the potential for the tech, and a part of her had wished desperately that it could have been a joint project for them, like so many of their others, so she could have shared some of that excitement with him.

Of course, now she wishes it had been their joint project so that she could shoulder some of the blame.

‘No,’ Jemma says quietly. ‘No, I can’t.’

Fitz nods, and waves his hand in the air in a _there you go then_ gesture, but she catches his fingers before he can let them drop back onto his lap again.

‘I can’t tell you that you’re not responsible for the technology existing,’ she continues, ‘but what you certainly aren’t responsible for is the way it was abused. That’s on Radcliffe, and no one else.’

‘That’s what he said to me,’ Fitz murmurs, ‘before he pushed me out the backdoor. He said that I couldn’t blame myself.’

Jemma groans. ‘As much as I hate to agree with that man on _anything_ , he’s right. You created the technology, yes, but it was somebody else who turned it into something terrible. When it left your hands, it was still a force for good.’

Fitz’s shoulders have slumped again, and Jemma waits. Anxious as she is to convince him that he is not to blame, she knows from experience that it will take a lot of time and a lot of patience for the guilt he is feeling to fade and she is determined to be there for him every step of the way.

‘I wish I could go back,’ he whispers, his eyes lifting up to the ceiling. ‘When I’m lying in bed and trying not to thinking about everything so I can get some sleep, that’s the one thought that keeps coming back to me. That if I could, I would go back a year and rip up all the schematics for the Framework I’d made and tell Radcliffe to _sod off_ that first time he showed me AIDA, so that none of this would have ever happened.’

Jemma bites her lip so hard she tastes blood.

‘We both know that’s not how science works, Fitz,’ she says evenly. ‘You can’t hold progress back because you’re afraid of how a small group of people will respond to it. Think about Galileo, Darwin, Marie Curie. Where would our world be if they hadn’t done the work they had done?’

Fitz blinks at her, looking vaguely bemused. ‘Did you just compare me to some of the greatest minds in history?’

Jemma rolls her eyes at him, a spark of fondness flaring in her chest. ‘Fitz, you ought to know by now that you are my _favourite_ mind in history.’

He smiles at that, a fragile fleeting smile, but Jemma considers it a victory all the same. Leaning into his side, she rests her head on his shoulder.

‘We’re scientists,’ she repeats. ‘It’s who we are to make discoveries, to invent and to progress. And we can’t stop doing that, not when the progress we’re making is going to be so helpful to so many people.’

Fitz doesn’t reply, and Jemma can see the tears welling up in his eyes again. Setting her jaw determinedly, she sits up a little straighter, so that she is in his direct line of sight.

‘Do you remember the conversation that we had on the Zephyr?’ she asks, tilting her head to the side. ‘When we were on our way to rescue Mace, right before it all happened.’

She watches him frown, his forehead puckering, as he nods.

Jemma wonders if he is remembering that moment the same way she is, and how she had sought him out in the side room like their sides were magnetized and they could never go too far without wanting to be drawn back together again.

But it is their hands that she remembers most about that conversation. She had touched his face, as despondent then as it is now, cupping his cheek in her palm as he gazed up at her. Then, she had rested her hand against his chest and felt his heart beat through his shirt, beating with the familiar rhythm it always did when she touched him.

He had taken her hand too, holding it loosely between his fingers on the table, the same way he had taken it back in the club in Bucharest. Looking back now, Jemma remembers how he had turned her hand over, rubbing his thumb against her fingers with his eyes flickering down to her ring finger.

After her encounter with his LMD and its confession of Fitz’s recent thoughts, that gesture holds a lot more poignancy in her memory than it had when it had first happened.

‘Yeah,’ Fitz croaks, ‘yeah, of course I do. But you can’t think the same now as you did then.’

Jemma laughs, softly, as tears spring to her own eyes. ‘What do you think has changed, Fitz? _Of course_ I still think the same. I always will.’

She reaches out to touch his face and turn him towards her.

‘When you came to me all those months ago with your idea for the Framework, I understood exactly what you were trying to do. It was a teaching tool, one designed to prepare agents for all the impossible scenarios we encounter on a day to day basis, to try and protect them against the dangers we face. And that’s how you explained the LMDs to me too, as tools to prevent even more lives being lost. Tools to protect, to help protect-‘

‘You,’ Fitz finishes hoarsely, looking up to meet her eyes.

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Jemma nods, feeling her stomach swoop at the intensity in his eyes.

‘Yeah,’ she whispers.

Just as she had done on the Zephyr, she places her hand on his heart. The way it starts to thump underneath her fingers, in a pattern as comforting as the word _home_ , gives her the courage to keep going.

‘None of us could have foreseen the way an evil-minded book was going to corrupt your creations. That was a left-fielder, if ever I saw one.’

Fitz snorts, and Jemma herself smiles at her weak attempt at light-hearted humour.

‘You’re a scientist,’ she says softly. ‘You want to help, you want to teach, and you want to protect. You have a genius mind and a good heart, and nobody, _nobody_ , can take that away from you. It’s who you are, and it’s why I love you.’

As she utters the word _love_ , Fitz sucks in a breath, and she feels the hairs on his arms stand to attention.

‘You say that so easily,’ he murmurs.

Jemma shakes her head, confused. ‘Of course I do, Fitz, because it’s easy for me to say.’

She hesitates, as the treacherous thought occurs to her that his mindset might have changed since she had watched his conversation with AIDA in the containment pod. Her stomach twists into knots and she has to take a moment to steel herself before continuing.

‘Is it…is it _not_ easy for you to say anymore?’

Fitz’s head snaps upwards.

‘No,’ he gasps. ‘No, that’s not it. That’s not it at all.’

All of a sudden, he seems restless, unable to sit still, and she lets go of his arm. Fitz pushes himself to the edge of the bed and stands up, placing his hands on his hips as he strides away from her to the window.

Jemma watches him go, feeling her heart start to pound inside her chest. Fitz paces in front of the window a few times, seemingly to compose himself, before he sighs and turns back to her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘That was a really poorly thought out thing for me to say, and it’s not what I meant at all.’

Shaking her head, Jemma unfolds her legs and gets up from the bed to follow him.

‘That’s alright,’ she says, quietly, as she approaches him. The panic that had risen up inside of her is slowly ebbing away, and she reaches out to rub his shoulder. ‘Can you try again? Tell me what you _did_ mean?’

Fitz nods, pinching at the bridge of his nose. ‘Yeah. Yeah, of course.’

He inhales deeply, before his hand tentatively reaches up to cover hers on his shoulder.

‘I know that we haven’t really talked yet about what you went through in the Framework. But I know that you went through a lot too, and I want to be here to talk about it with you whenever you’re ready to.’

Jemma nods, feeling tears well up in her eyes again. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers.

Fitz manages to smile at her, the corners of his mouth quirking upwards momentarily. ‘I think I was just worried that after everything that had happened…you wouldn’t find it such an easy thing to say to me.’

‘But it is!’ Jemma clutches at his hand. ‘It’s just as easy to say as it was the first time I said it; in fact, it’s even easier. I love you.’ She hears her voice soften around the words. ‘You’re my best friend.’

‘And you’re mine,’ Fitz whispers back to her.

Looking up at him, Jemma can see how torn his expression is, even in the dim light of her room. There is gratitude in his eyes, love, and even relief, but there is something more behind those emotions, something still uncertain and afraid.

Lifting her hand out from underneath his, she tips his chin upwards, in her heart already knowing the answer to the question she is about to ask him.

‘What else is it, Fitz?’

‘You watched me do things in that world,’ he says, ‘that were truly horrible. The things that I did and the things that I said were things that I could never even conceive of doing here, and I feel sick whenever I remember doing them.’

Pursing her lips together tightly, Jemma closes her eyes for a moment as the memories flood back to her. She can only imagine how much worse the ones running through Fitz’s mind must be.

‘You were on your knees, Jemma,’ he says, his words coming out in a heaving rush. ‘You were on your knees because I had _shot_ you in the leg, and I was holding a gun to your head that I would have fired if I’d had the chance, and I said-‘

He gasps again, a great shudder running through his body as he remembers the words he had said to her. Shaking her head furiously, Jemma grasps both his hands in hers and pulls them to her chest, pressing their fingers together as she shivers herself.

‘Don’t,’ she says thickly. ‘Please don’t.’

‘I can still hear and see all those things whenever I close my eyes,’ Fitz whispers. ‘And what I don’t understand is how you can still look at me the same way if you do too.’

Tilting her head back, Jemma silently curses herself.

She should have found a way to have this conversation with him sooner; having watched his and AIDA’s tableau in the containment room, she had known he was afraid of this. But since then, their lives and her emotions had been too turbulent for her to address it directly with him.

She had hoped, probably naively, that she would be able to convey her feelings to him in the way they spoke, the way she looked at him and in the way they touched, but Jemma realises now what a mistake this had been. After all, if she was in Fitz’s position, if she had been through all that he had, such indirectness would never have been enough to convince her.

Taking a deep breath, Jemma opens her eyes into his.

‘I’ve never been a good liar, Fitz,’ she says. ‘I’ve gotten a lot better at it over the years, out of necessity, really, but there’s always been one person I’ll never been able to lie convincingly to. And that’s you.’

Squeezing his fingers between hers, she licks her lips, taking a moment to compose the words she wants to say.

‘I do still hear and see the things that happened in there. I still see Ward, and Trip, and Mace, and poor little Hope, and, yes, I still see the parts that I shared with you too. I still dream about when I saw you on Radcliffe’s island, and at the back door. I have nightmares about those times, and I hear the words the other you said to me, repeated over and over, and when I wake up, I’m crying.’

Fitz’s face has crumpled, but Jemma isn’t finished and she takes hold of his sleeve to stop him from turning away from her.

‘But when I look at you…when I see you across the room, when I look into your eyes, those aren’t the things I see. When I look at you, I see the boy who fell asleep on my dorm room floor with a text book on his face and his mouth open. I see the man who trusted me with our last breath at the bottom of the ocean. I see my best friend who pulled me back from the other end of the universe, and I see the person that I love. When I hear your voice, I don’t hear the things that were said to me in that warehouse. I hear _you’re more than that_ , and _your hands are freezing_ , and _I love you too_.’

Swallowing hard, Jemma fixes him with a purposeful glance.

‘ _For her_.’

Fitz’s eyebrows shoot up, and he sucks in a sharp breath as he realises that, somehow, she had heard what he’d said in the containment room.

I hear all the times you’ve called my name, Fitz,’ Jemma says, softly, and she smiles. ‘And all of those things, they are so much louder to me than anything I heard in the Framework because they came from _you_. From the heart that I love and the mind that matches mine. So, yes – it’s easy for me to say I love you, and it always will be, because when I think of you that is what I think of. And that’s not going to change.’

Fitz nods, his forehead sinking forwards to rest against hers. He exhales, slowly, and Jemma squeezes his hands again, willing all the tension holding his body taunt to flow into her instead, to allow her to share the pain. This time, Fitz squeezes back.

‘I love you,’ he whispers, and she can hear the conviction behind the words. Then, he shakes his head. ‘It’s almost ironic.’

Jemma frowns. ‘What is?’

When he lifts his head up, the look in his eyes is enough to leave her breathless.

‘That because of the person who means the least to me in this world, I almost lost the person that means the most.’

Tears spring back to Jemma’s eyes, and she has to cover her mouth to stop a sob escaping from her lips. She steps forwards, just as Fitz’s hands come up to her shoulders to draw her into him.

They fold together like waves, sinking into one another’s arms. Jemma closes her eyes as her arms tighten around Fitz’s waist, and she tucks her face into the crook of his neck to breathe in the balmy scent of his skin, feeling the beat of his heart against her cheek. She feels Fitz’s thumb start to draw small circles on the back of her neck, a comforting habit he’d picked up over the last few years, and retaliates by twisting her hands into the fabric of his shirt.

He sighs against her, a great, shuddering sigh as they sway slightly on their feet, and Jemma wonders whether Fitz is feeling what she is: the irrevocable feeling of _home_.

Twisting her head against his chest, she finds herself staring at the heavy metal shutter of her window, and unexpectedly finds herself thinking of another conversation they’d had in front of a window what felt like an eon ago.

‘It’s a shame we don’t have a sunrise to watch,’ she murmurs. ‘There’d be something rather poetic about that, don’t you think?’

Fitz laughs, softly, and Jemma feels his arms tighten around her shoulders.

‘If I could give you a sunrise, Jemma, you know that I would,’ he says. ‘But I don’t think there’s much chance of us finding one tonight, unfortunately.’

She hums against him, before gazing pensively at the control panel for her window. Slowly, an idea starts to form in Jemma’s mind.

‘We might not be able to have a sunrise,’ she says. ‘But perhaps we can find something else instead…’

Fitz seems very reluctant to let her go as she eases herself out of his arms. His fingers trail all the way down to her wrists as she turns away to the control panel and flicks a switch.

‘Jemma? What are you-?’

He breaks off as the shutter, stiff and noisy from lack of use, begins to rise. Stepping back to him, Jemma slips her hand into his as they stand together to watch the galaxies unfurl before them.

Objectively speaking, it is a pretty spectacular view. The light from the distant stars and planets is so bright that it fills the small room, illuminating their skin and faces. When she glances up at Fitz, it makes Jemma smile to see that he quite literally has stars in his eyes.

His arm brushes against hers, and he glances down at her.

‘Are you alright with this?’

Jemma nods, and leans into his side. ‘I am. Now that you’re with me.’

She can’t see him smile, but when he bends down to press his lips to the top of her head, she can feel it.

‘Did you ever play that game when you were little where you tried to count all the stars in the sky?’

Fitz snorts. ‘No, because I knew I would never be able to. Why? Did you?’

‘Yes, but only because Dad bet me a fiver that I couldn’t. So, naturally, I had to try.’

‘Oh, naturally.’

‘I’d get up to about four thousand,’ Jemma says, staring out at the stars in front of her, ‘before falling asleep. And then the next night, I would start all over again.’

Fitz rubs at her shoulder, and she loops her arms around his middle, linking them together. If Jemma has anything to do with it, she’ll never have to let him go again.

‘I’m looking out at these stars, Fitz,’ she says, ‘and for each one, I’m seeing a hope for us, an unexplored possibility for our future. I’m seeing chances, choices, dreams. And all of these opportunities are waiting for us, whenever we feel ready to start exploring them. Just like the stars – just like _me_ – they aren’t about to go anywhere.’

She waits, for half a heartbeat, before looking up at him. Fitz is staring intently out of the window, his eyes wide and his lips slightly parted as he starts to smile. Watching him, Jemma is reminded that it is not just the stars that inspire hope inside her.

When he turns to face her, she lifts one eyebrow and grins.

‘Do you want to count them with me?’

Fitz laughs, and reaches for her hand to bring it up to his lips. He kisses her, softly, on the knuckles, and Jemma feels the warmth from his lips seeping into her cold skin, warming her through to the bone.

When he opens his eyes, he tilts his face up towards her so that it is framed in starlight and hope.

‘I do,’ he whispers. ‘Every day, for the rest of my life.’

 

 


End file.
